Manchester United ultimately prevailed in their struggle for supremacy with Chelsea last night, but it needed a penalty shoot-out that went into sudden death to separate England's two top football teams.

Driving rain in the Russian capital added to the drama as penalty misses by England's player of the year, Cristiano Ronaldo, and John Terry, the Chelsea captain, cancelled each other out, prolonging the agony. Nicolas Anelka, the French striker, missed with the London club's seventh penalty and thus gave United their third victory in the tournament, to follow those of 1968 and 1999.

Ten days ago the two clubs finished the domestic league season separated only by just two points, among the thinnest of margins, and it was no surprise when they proved equally hard to separate in the climactic match. Goals from Ronaldo for United and Frank Lampard for Chelsea in normal time were not enough to bring a result this time.

"I thought it would be the worst day of my life, but the lads believed and we won it even despite my miss," said Ronaldo, the leading scorer of the English season with 42 goals. "I'm very proud of them. The penalties are a lottery. I think we deserved it because we played better in the whole game."

Among scorers for United in the shoot-out was Ryan Giggs, who came into the side as a 16-year-old in 1991 and last night came on as a substitute to make his 759th appearance, breaking a club record held by Sir Bobby Charlton.

There were 10 nations represented in the starting line-ups of the two teams, with another seven nationalities sitting on the bench. But this was still the first all-English final in the continent's top club competition, taking place at a venue once dedicated to Lenin and renamed the Luzhniki stadium, where Allan Wells, Steve Ovett, Sebastian Coe and Daley Thompson performed their gold medal-winning feats in the 1980 Olympics.

Blue is the Colour, Chelsea's signature tune, rang out from one end, Take Me Home Country Roads from the fans in red on the opposite side. Most of the supporters had flown in that morning and would be bussed straight back to the airport. It was if this was no more than a day trip to the other end of England.

Four young United supporters stood in the stadium wearing white T-shirts, each bearing a single black numeral of the date 1958 - the year United's plane crashed on take-off at Munich airport while returning from a European Cup match, killing eight members of the team and 15 other passengers. For Chelsea, the match offered their first chance to win the trophy already captured twice by their opponents.

England's leading clubs were fighting it out for the championship of Europe under the eyes of the man who hopes to curb their growing hegemony, and believes he has found the way to accomplish it. Michel Platini, the president of Uefa, governing body of the continent's football, intends to stop clubs spending their way to success by issuing licences dependent on freedom from debt.

No one was billing last night's match as the Credit Crunch, but a meeting of the world's two most heavily indebted football clubs provided an apt symbol of the English Premier League.